There’s No Feud with Dr. Krauthammer — Just Amazement That Anyone on Our Side Would Misunderstand Liberals

Oct 29, 2013

RUSH: I have to go back to yesterday. I knew this was gonna happen. There was no way to keep it from happening. I got this Politico story here by Dylan Byers, “Limbaugh vs. Krauthammer — Rush Limbaugh took aim at columnist Charles Krauthammer on Monday, sparking yet another intra-party debate among conservative pundits.” I did not do that. I do not do feuds. I do not do intra-party debates and things like that. It was not the purpose.

Let me go through this again. I didn’t even see it. Fox did a one-hour special on Krauthammer’s life in conjunction with his new book, and, by the way, he sent me a signed copy of it that I received Friday. The staff didn’t give it to me until yesterday after I had done this segment. But I was told and then I got the audio and heard it myself that Dr. Krauthammer said he didn’t get fully who Obama was until five weeks after he was inaugurated. And I was incredulous at that. I still am. I spent the first hour of the program yesterday trying to explain what I sense is a — actually, that illustrated a great problem that we have.

I’m sitting here assuming that everybody on my team — and I think conservatives are on my team, and I think everybody sees Obama from the get-go for what he is, for what he was. I’m thinking particularly highly educated, profoundly aware people, know a socialist when they see one, know a liberal when they see one, and know that they don’t tell the truth, know that they obfuscate, lie, and so forth. So I was shocked, and George Will was quoted as saying much the same thing, that they didn’t really realize how leftist Obama was until five weeks after he was inaugurated.

Now, of course I knew who he was without knowing him. He’s a liberal. That’s all I need, and that’s not a simplification. Liberals are who they are. Socialists are who they are. They have techniques. They have behavioral patterns. You can type them. They can’t be honest about what they intend or they would never get elected. You think Obama would have been elected if he’da told people what’s happening now with Obamacare was the design? You think he would have been elected if he’d told people the unemployment rate be what it is now and 90 million Americans wouldn’t be working, and that the economy be floundering for five years. If Obama had told people that’s what was gonna happen, do you think he’d have been elected? No way.

So I was surprised, and it was a learning experience for me. ‘Cause I just make too many assumptions. I assume that we’re all on the same page and we’re all starting on the same page, and I was wrong. Now, The Politico says here, “Limbaugh accused both Krauthammer and fellow columnist George Will of being ‘fooled’ into believing that President Obama was a centrist when he took office, which seemed to leave the right-wing talk show host flabbergasted.” And then they quote me. “I intellectually donÂ’t know how you can not figure out Barack Obama — a liberal is a liberal. I know Obama, for the low-information crowd, could be whatever you wanted him to be, a blank canvas. But for crying out loud, weÂ’re not talking about low-information people here.Â”

There was no accusation, and I begged people, “Please do not send Dr. Krauthammer e-mails criticizing him, lambasting, any of that,” because that was not my purpose here. My purpose was to illustrate how much ground we’ve got to go, the things that I assume and know to be true, many others don’t. And it does flabbergast me, but there was no accusation here. There was just surprise.

Then the next passage, “In an interview with NewsMaxTV, Krauthammer returned fire by saying that unnamed talk radio hosts ‘ought to listen to what I said.'” I did. I played the sound bite. Cookie, go grab it again, would you? She gave it to me yesterday. Here’s what Charles Krauthammer said to NewsMax. “I said nothing of the sort. I said that when Obama was elected, it was not clear whether he was a centrist Democrat who would throw a bone to the left, or if he was a man of the left who would occasionally throw a bone to the center. What I was trying to explain is that after three hours of policy discussion both myself and my colleagues had no better idea, which is a way of saying how well he could disguise his beliefs.”

Then that, you know, kind of sums this up. Obama didn’t fool me. Okay, here’s the sound bite. This is what I was reacting to. This is from the Friday night, Fox’s one-hour special that they did on Dr. Krauthammer’s life in conjunction with his new book.

KRAUTHAMMER: I remember before the president-elect arrived saying, “You know, I haven’t been able to figure this guy out. Is he a centrist who will occasionally throw a bone to the left or is he a lefty who will occasionally throw a bone to the right?” Nobody had any idea.

WILL: Well, that was part of Mr. Obama’s great strength. He was a national Rorschach Test.

KRAUTHAMMER: So we spent three hours with this new man, he leaves, and we’re staying behind a little bit, and I say — same question — “Is he a centrist? Is he a lefty?” Nobody knew.

BAIER: Five years later you think you’ve figured out him out?

KRAUTHAMMER: I figured him out after that first State of the Union speech, five weeks later.

RUSH: Okay. So that’s in Dr. Krauthammer’s own words: Five weeks into the administration, he’d figured Obama out. All I was saying was that I’d figured Obama out in 2008. In fact, I figured Obama out at the convention speech. I think probably most of you did, too, and the Tea Party certainly did. There was no mystery. Every liberal disguises who they are. Every liberal tries to disguise his intentions.

I mean, two weeks into Obama’s administration, he’s telling John Boehner and the Republican leadership, “Don’t listen to Limbaugh. That’s not how things get done in this town.” What? I’m not in that town! Don’t listen to Limbaugh? The point here… Well, one more quote from Krauthammer on the NewsMax TV interview. It didn’t take long to figure out his political ideology. I’ve had no illusions about Obama from the beginning.

The point I was making is, he was trying to disguise his political ideology and how far left he was when he ran in 2008 but he let down the mask as soon as he got elected. That’s my point. He may have been trying to disguise it. How do you know he was trying to disguise it? How do you know he’s trying to disguise it? While it’s happening, how do you know that, unless you know what he is? It seems to be the starting point has to be Obama is a far-left-wing radical.

If you’re gonna then say, “Yeah, during the campaign he was trying to disguise who he was,” then you must know who he was. I just think there’s an inside-the-Beltway mode of behavior in thinking that differs from outside the Beltway. I think there’s a lot of people inside the Beltway who assume that every president is gonna want to try to grow the economy, every president is going to want to try to reduce the debt, and every president is gonna want to lower taxes.

They make these wild assumptions because that’s just what they think happens, and Obama was never, ever typical in that regard. All you had to do is go back and listen or read anything he’s said over the years, and you knew. I mean, five days before he was inaugurated, he promises a fundamental transformation of the United States of America. What does that mean? So the only point I was making — and maybe I didn’t make it as coherently as I intended to, and I’ll try again here.

I was flabbergasted that even three weeks into the administration there were still conservatives who did not know who this man really was — and I’m not bragging. There’s no braggadocio here. I wish everybody were able to be honest with themselves. When you hear that somebody’s a liberal, then that tells you who they are. It tells you what they’re gonna do. It tells you what they think of America. It tells you what they think of conservatives. It tells you what they think about anything that is institutionally or traditionally American.

It tells you that they are who they are. There’s no such thing as a moderate liberal, there’s no such thing as a moderate radical, and I didn’t understand the idea of waiting around to see if maybe Obama would be one. I knew he wasn’t gonna be, and I’m just shocked that others didn’t know it as well. That’s all. I just don’t understand it. Everything I feared is happening. Every characteristic of Barack Obama that I thought existed, does.

There hasn’t been one thing Obama’s done that surprised me. Not one aspect of any of his policies surprises me. Benghazi doesn’t surprise me. Obamacare, the mess that it is, doesn’t surprise me. Nothing surprises me. I never expected the guy to be moderate. But others held out hope, maybe, or…? I don’t know. I’m not gonna assign motivations I can’t possibly know. But this business of accusing? There was no accusing here. There was simply incredulity.

There I am on January 16 saying, “I hope he fails,” and I figure everybody’s got to know what I mean by this. He’s a socialist, and I don’t want him to succeed in implementing his policies in this country. I didn’t. To me, it’s self-explanatory. It didn’t require explanation. The Reverend Wright, for crying out loud! How in the world can you listen to Obama’s preacher, how can you listen to him talk about his mother and his mother-in-law or his grandmother or whatever?

That’s what didn’t compute with me.

Now, I could understand some moderates thinking this or some quasi-people that are not ideological. You can totally understand them falling for this trick. But we’re talking about people I really thought were rock-ribbed, dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. I’m just incredulous that it would take somebody five weeks to figure out that he’d been faking it all that time — that’s all — when I knew from the first speech.

Yes, I can. It is totally, totally sufficient. They are who they are. Show me one who’s not.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me make one more observation, and actually not an observation. I’m gonna remind you of an observation. When Obama scheduled that dinner — and you remember who it was with? It was Larry Kudlow, it was George Will (at his house), it was Charles Krauthammer, and I forget who else. There were a couple of others there. Ah, yeah, David Brooks. I remember when that dinner was scheduled, I told you what the purpose of that dinner was.

That was Barack Obama attempting to co-opt conservative opinion makers.

He had chosen opinion makers that he thought would be open, and it was his attempt to — I’ll use the word — “corrupt” conservative opinion. That’s what liberals do. When he tells Boehner and the Republican leadership, “Don’t listen to Limbaugh! That’s not the way things are done,” what he wants is for just any Republican in that meeting to go out to the microphones on the White House lawn and agree with him, ’cause the whole point of that was to try to diminish the credibility of any critics.

By inviting those conservatives, he was elevating those conservatives as the “credible” ones. “Oh, the president had dinner with George Will and Krauthammer and Kudlow!” So they were going to be the ones. After that dinner, they were supposed to have been branded “acceptable,” and anybody could listen to them and take what they said and believe it. That was the purpose of that. I remember saying it ’cause I know how these people operate. Anyway, here’s the next question.

I guess now it would be a mistake for me to assume that everybody on our side gets Hillary, too. Just like I assumed that everybody on our side, the opinion makers, understood from the get-go who Obama was and what we were in store for, I guess it would be a mistake to assume that about Hillary. Because I’m listening to ’em say, “Oh, yeah! She’s more pragmatic than Obama. She has White House experience.” I’m listening to this, and it’s the same all over again. We have people on our side who are gonna give Hillary the benefit of the doubt, despite everything they know and despite the fact that she’s just as radical as Obama is.

Oh, well.

It just never ends.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. Here’s why it matters. The reason it matters, if you don’t understand who your opponent is, you will not know what it takes to defeat him. It’s just that simple. If you do not understand your opponent, you will not know how to effectively combat him. Now, maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. Maybe the people I’m talking about really don’t have any desire to defeat Obama. Maybe what they want to do is simply commentate and explain him to people. Yeah, I want to do that, too. But the purpose is to defeat these people, within the political arena, not just explain them.

The reason why all this matters to me is that’s what I thought we were all trying to do, and apparently I’ve been making a lot of mistaken assumptions. Apparently there isn’t a lot of — inside the Beltway, anyway — energy to defeat Obama, just mitigate the damage and hold on until we maybe get power back. But I’m just telling you, the reason why this matters, again, if you do not fully understand your opponent, you’re never going to know what it takes to defeat him, which is what I thought this was about. But that’s just me.

I’m not gonna make this mistake again. I’m not gonna assume that everybody on our side understands Hillary and gets what she’s about. I’m not gonna make that assumption anymore. I’m gonna assume that plenty of people inside the Beltway think she might be okay here, there, foreign policy experience. She was there at Benghazi. She’s traveled the world. You know, all this yuk yuk stuff that may add up to maturity since the Clinton years or additional qualifications or whatever. You know, I read Obama’s books. I listened to what he said. I read Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What? No. No, no, no. I have a lot of respect for Dr. Krauthammer. That’s why I was surprised by that. You know, this business of Politico? I don’t do “feuds.” I particularly refuse to do “feuds,” and that’s not what this is. It’s no more complicated than that. I was just incredulous that who Obama was, was missed for so long by so many people. But that’s it. That’s all.